The controversy over Tony Blair’s friendship with Wendi Deng intensified last night as new evidence emerged of the closeness between them.

The Mail on Sunday can disclose that a cache of emails to and from Ms Deng and the former Prime Minister was discovered when her ex-husband Rupert Murdoch filed for divorce.

And the newspaper can also reveal how:

The
emails exchanged between Ms Deng and Mr Blair fuelled Mr Murdoch’s
suspicions about their relationship. One source, who knows the content
of the emails, said: ‘If it was my wife I would be furious.’

Mr Blair and Ms Deng met at the Mayfair private members’ club 5 Hertford Street, home of the exotic Loulou’s nightclub.

Mr Blair met Ms Deng at Mr Murdoch’s London home when he was out of the country.

Just good friends: Tony Blair and Wendi Deng are understood to have exchanged several emails, fuelling the suspicions of her media tycoon husband Rupert Murdioch

The newspaper revealed in December that
Ms Deng’s crush on Mr Blair was laid bare in a note in which she
confessed how attractive she found him, and that the pair had stayed
overnight at one of Mr Murdoch’s homes without his knowledge.

RELATED ARTICLES

Share this article

We were also first to reveal how a furious Mr Murdoch ended all ties with his former friend and ally, Mr Blair, because he felt ‘betrayed.’

Further details of lovestruck Ms Deng’s note, in which she praised Mr Blair’s ‘good body’, his ‘really, really good legs’ and even his ‘butt’ were revealed by US magazine Vanity Fair last week.

It said staff at Mr Murdoch’s home in Carmel, California, were uneasy when Mr Blair arrived and tried to find her.

Ms Deng revealed in in a note in how attractive she found Mr Blair, praising his 'good body', 'good legs' and even his 'butt'

The
magazine claimed they told him Ms Deng had gone to the master bedroom,
but ‘by the time they could tell her, Mr Blair was looking for her, they
found Mr Blair walking into the master bedroom and closing the door
behind him’.

On another occasion ‘they were feeding each other during dinner, which made the staff uncomfortable’.

Mr Blair's friends deny he had an affair with Ms Deng and the Mail on Sunday has no evidence to the contrary

Mr Blair’s allies have been rocked by
the ‘Wendi and Tony’ headlines.

One female former Labour Minister and
ally confronted him: ‘Tony, look me in the eyes and tell me you did not
have an affair with Wendi.’ Mr Blair insisted he had not.

Others have claimed he did not reciprocate Ms Deng’s feelings but was simply trying to help her cope with her marriage problems.

Mr Blair’s friends deny he had an affair with Ms Deng and the Mail on Sunday has no evidence to the contrary.

But
82-year-old Mr Murdoch, chairman of the News Corp media giant, claims
he was deceived – and the furore shows no sign of going away.

The
Mail on Sunday has been told that the warm feelings of Ms Deng for Mr
Blair were clear in a cache of emails sent from her newscorp.com email
address to Mr Blair and others. Mr Blair replied to many of them.

An
ally of Mr Blair said: ‘Ms Deng was assisting with Mr Blair’s
Foundation and he is godfather to one of her children. It would be odd
if they didn’t exchange emails. They were not intimate.’

The
300 pages of emails – some of which were sent between Ms Deng and Mr
Blair – came to light, along with her private note praising his ‘good
body,’ as Mr Murdoch was preparing for the divorce proceedings that led
to the end of their marriage in November last year.

It
was a ‘careless’ email by Ms Deng, thought to have been sent to the
wrong person by mistake, that is believed to have given away her
meetings with Mr Blair in the first place.

One of the reasons for the continuing
controversy is that fresh details of meetings all over the world
between Mr Blair and Ms Deng, without Mr Murdoch’s knowledge, keep
coming to light. The Mail on Sunday can reveal that they met late in the
evening at 5 Hertford Street on August 2, 2012.

The club is in a former red-light
district where Tory peer Jeffrey Archer first became entangled in the
scandal that led to him being jailed when he met prostitute Monica
Coghlan in 1986, but is now one of the most expensive parts of London.

It is run by Robin Birley, aristo- cratic son of socialite Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and Mark Birley, who founded Annabel’s.

Prince
William and the Duchess of Cambridge are frequent visitors at 5
Hertford Street, whose members include George Clooney, Tom Cruise and
Kate Moss.

A source at the London office of Mr Murdoch’s News UK, which owns The Sun and The Times, said: ‘We know they met at Loulou’s.’

Together: Mr Blair and Ms Deng are understood to have met on a yacht in the Mediterranean owned by music mogul David Geffen

Mr Blair and Ms Deng are also said to have met at Rupert Murdoch's London apartment, left, and at his California ranch, right

Asked
yesterday if Mr Blair had met Ms Deng at Loulou’s, a source close to Mr
Blair initially dismissed it with contempt, saying ‘not only did they
not meet there, he has never even heard of it’.

Asked
later if he had met Ms Deng at 5 Hertford Street, the source confirmed
Mr Blair was there. ‘He did meet her for a drink along with other
people. He was there for half an hour and then left to go for dinner.’

This newspaper has been told Mr Blair
and Ms Deng met at Mr Murdoch’s apartment in London’s Westminster twice
in four days in June 2012.

Met on yacht in Mediterranean owned by music mogul David Geffen. Date unknown.

Met at 5 Hertford St Club, London, August 2, 2012.

Weekend stay in Carmel, October 7, 2012.

Met at Murdoch’s home in Los Angeles. Date unknown.

*Blair’s friends say he saw Ms Deng at Murdoch’s apartment only once.

A
source said Mr Blair met Ms Deng there on June 21 and June 24. ‘He was
seen coming and going at unexpected times,’ said the source.

Mr Murdoch was not in Britain at the time and was unaware his wife was meeting Mr Blair at their London home.

When he was Prime Minister, Mr Blair was a frequent guest at cocktail parties hosted by the newspaper tycoon at the apartment.

Mr Blair’s friends admitted he
visited Ms Deng at the Murdochs’ home for lunch. But they said unnamed
‘other people’ were present and were adamant he had visited her there
only once.

As
well as revealing her longing for Mr Blair, the note by Ms Deng found
at Mr Murdoch’s Carmel home is believed to have revealed a further
intriguing insight into her feelings – and worries.

It
is said to show Ms Deng believed that Catherine Rimmer, Mr Blair’s
‘strategy director’ at Tony Blair Associates, and who worked for him in
No 10, warned him he would get ‘in trouble’ with her.

The note reportedly states:
‘Katherine (sic) Rimmer does not like me because she does not want Tony
gets (sic) in trouble with me.’

Friends
of Mr Murdoch had told him they feared Ms Deng was meeting Mr Blair
behind his back. He was not convinced until Ms Deng spent a weekend with
Mr Blair at Mr Murdoch’s California ranch, according to UK-based
friends of Mr Murdoch.

They
say she made two errors. First, Mr Murdoch’s staff reported their
concerns after seeing Mr Blair seek out Ms Deng in her bedroom in April
2012. Their worries reached Mr Murdoch, who asked them what they had
seen.

The
next day Ms Deng and Mr Blair flew together from Carmel to Los Angeles
for a dinner hosted by Mr Murdoch to raise money for Mr Blair’s
foundation.

Rumours: Friends of Mr Murdoch had told him they feared Ms Deng was meeting Mr Blair behind his back

When Mr Murdoch found out about it later, he is said to have regarded it as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’.

Crucially, when Ms Deng and Mr Blair spent another weekend in Carmel in October, 2012, she had told her husband she was meeting a girlfriend.

But the girlfriend left early and let it slip when she bumped into friends of Mr Murdoch. Mr Blair arrived next day. To make matters worse, Mr Murdoch was at a family gathering, attending to his dying 103-year-old mother.

The following week he spoke to Mr Blair, who reportedly omitted to say he had met with Ms Deng at Carmel.